On 4/6/00 10:53 AM, Craig Spooner at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Thanks Tuviah, but I was hoping for something like MetaTalk has x
> number of vocabulary items as opposed to Lingo or VB, which have y...
> Even if we don't know the figures for the other tools, does anyone
> know these "vitals" for MetaCard?
> ...Scott, have you every counted it all up?
You can use the propertyNames function - and is there a messageNames
function as well?
If you compare messaages, which are the heart and soul of interactivity, I
think you'll find MetaTalk has a significantly greater number than Lingo
(about twice as many when I counted them two years ago).
But I'm not sure this type of quantitative comparison is as meaningful as
something more qualitative. For example, a Director apologist could argue
that while Lingo has fewer messages, they do offer a great many arguments to
those messages, and other functions as well, which often allow the developer
to arrive at a similar solution.
More effective might be to compare object models: Director was created for
linear animation, and in spite of how I've been slapped at industry cocktail
parties for this perception, I still don't think a linear timeline is
optimal for designing non-linear media. Yes, it can be done, just as a
screwdriver can be used to pound nails; "possible" should never be confused
with "optimal". ;) If only someone had the cash to do a decent usability
test on this I have a strong hunch such methods would prove me right on this
one.
There are some things for which Director cannot be beat: animated
presentations, or even some CD-ROM games. But for designing true
applications, choosing Director means working much harder than one really
needs to; it was simply never designed for that and lives up to its design
history in that regard.
And then there's price: It is a continual source of annoyance among people
I know that Director is falsely described as a cross-platform development
solution. In truth, any version of Director is _half_ of a cross-platform
solution - to get the other half you need to pay full price for a complete
second copy just to deploy on another operating system.
So an honest price comparison makes MetaCard look very favorable:
MetaCard: $995
Director: $1,800
ToolBook: $2,495 (single-platform only, and in a scary position: they
only managed to get from 7.0 to 7.1 over _two years_)
One quantitative comparison might be useful: benchmarked interpreter speed.
I've only compared HC, SC, and MC, and of course of the three MC is orders
of magnitude faster for most operations (even more so in v.2.3).
You're welcome to grab the benchmarking tools at my FTP server and make
other version in ToolBook or Director if you like - I'd be very interested
in the results.
ftp://ftp.fourthworld.com/MetaCard/4W_MetaBench.mc.sit.hqx
ftp://ftp.fourthworld.com/HyperCard/4W_HyperBench.sit.hqx
ftp://ftp.fourthworld.com/SuperCard/Tools/4W_SuperBench.sit.hqx
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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